The Teachers’ Resource Centre is widely associated with providing quality teacher education and training across Pakistan. We were the first non-profit, non-government organization established in 1986, by a group of educationists, with the express purpose of raising teaching benchmarks in both government and private sector schools around the country.

TRC started out small, with a fledgling programme of teacher training workshops. Over the years our stimulating workshop programme has grown rapidly, both in the number of workshops that we conduct and the variety of topics that we cover. This popular programme has greatly contributed to the professional growth of teachers and has become a lively forum where they can meet and exchange views.

However we do much more than that.

Post-workshops, TRC’s continues to provide support to schools and their staff. We have a follow-up programme for our workshops and also offer intensive classroom support to schools that request it.

We are the only private sector organisation that has developed a national curriculum that was endorsed and owned by the Curriculum Wing, Federal Ministry of Education. This was Pakistan’s first National Early Childhood Education Curriculum in 2002. We worked closely with them to review and revise it in 2007. We continue to work with the ministry on matters related to Early Childhood Education.

In addition to this, we continue to look for new avenues through which we can support the professional development of teachers. From developing teaching learning resources to publishing regular online newsletters, circulars and articles, TRC frequently reaches out beyond the confines of its workshops, to motivate, inform and assist teachers across the country.

We also regularly undertake educational research in our sphere of interest. We find that this allows us to do hands-on development work with specific targets groups, especially the low-income group; a group we particularly want to continue working with. Donor agencies and multinational corporations fund such projects.

In our quest to understand and improve the learning process we also do radical things, such as setting up the Alternative Learning Space. The ALS is a small, but significant attempt by TRC to explore alternatives to the traditional school system, which we feel is not really equipped to deal with individual learning styles of children. Housed at our premises, the ALS is an informal space that provides an integrated approach to learning in a safe environment for self-motivated learners. We’ve been getting some great feedback and interesting insights into children’s natural curiosity from the enthusiastic, low-income, non school-going children who visit the ALS regularly.

In keeping with the pioneering spirit that helped establish us over two decades ago, TRC started the ball rolling yet again with its Media Literacy Initiative in 2006. The initiative was launched in response to Pakistan’s media explosion and to help teachers and parents understand its heavy impact on children (and themselves).

And finally we have set up the TRC-IECE. That’s the TRC-Institute of Early Childhood Education, which awards a one-year international ECE certificate to in-service and pre-service teachers and anyone else who is concerned with bringing up children in today’s rapidly changing world.